Inancient Roman religion, asacellum is a small shrine. The word is adiminutive fromsacrum (neuter ofsacer, "belonging to a god").[1] The numeroussacella ofancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by families, and public shrines. Asacellum might be square or round.[2]
Varro andVerrius Flaccus describesacella in ways that at first seem contradictory, the former defining asacellum in its entirety as equivalent to acella,[3] which is specifically an enclosed space, and the latter insisting that asacellum had no roof.[4] "Enclosure", however, is the shared characteristic, roofed over or not. "Thesacellum", notesJörg Rüpke, "was both less complex and less elaborately defined than a temple proper".[5]
The meaning can overlap with that ofsacrarium, a place where sacred objects(sacra) were stored or deposited for safekeeping.[6] Thesacella of theArgei, for instance, are also calledsacraria.[7] Inprivate houses, thesacrarium was the part of the house where the images of thePenates were kept; thelararium was a form ofsacrarium for theLares. Bothsacellum andsacrarium passed intoChristian usage.
Other Latin words for temple or shrine areaedes,aedicula,fanum,delubrum andtemplum, though this last word encompasses the whole religiously sanctioned precinct.
Eachcuria had its ownsacellum overseen by theceleres, originally the bodyguard of the king, who preserved a religious function in later times.[8] These were related to the ritual of theArgei, but probably there were other rites connected with thesesacella.[citation needed]
A case tried in September 50 BC indicates that a publicsacellum might be encompassed by a private property, with the expectation that it remain open to the public. It was alleged that the defendant,Ap. Claudius Pulcher, acensor at the time, had failed to maintain public access to asacellum on his property.[9]
Sacellum ordelubrum ofMinerva capta, "CaptiveMinerva", a shrine on the Caelian Hill that contained a statue of Minerva plundered fromFalerii when that city was taken by the Romans in 241 BC.[17]
In amanuscript from theAbbey of Saint Gall,sacellum is glossed asOld Irishnemed,Gaulishnemeton, originally asacred grove or space defined for religious purposes, and later a building used for such.[22]InChristian architecture, rooflessness ceases to be a defining characteristic and the word may be applied to a small chapel marked off by a screen from the main body of a church,[23] while an Italiansacello may alternatively be a small chapel or oratory which stands as a building in its own right.
^The plaintiff wasMarcus Caelius Rufus, acurule aedile in 50 and two years later apraetor.Cicero,Ad familiares 8.12.3, andLivy 40.51.8; Michael C. Alexander,Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC to 50 BC (University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 169.
^Described byCicero, accurately or with exaggeration, asmaximum et sanctissimum ("most holy and great"),Har. Resp. 32; "it may have been nothing more than aCompital shrine," observes Steven H. Rutledge,"The Roman Destruction of Sacred Sites,"Historia 56.2 (2007), p. 182.
^The use of the wordcapta may imply that Minerva was held prisoner, in contrast to deities that were transferred to Rome by the ritual ofevocatio, which invited a deity to change sides with the promise of superior cult; Robert Schilling, "Minerva,"Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 137.
^Roger D. Woodard,Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult (University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 254, note 6.
The dictionary definition ofsacellum at Wiktionary